"The returns to schooling or the skill premium is a key parameter in various literatures, including globalization and inequality and international migration. This paper explores the skill premium and its link to exports in Latin America, thus linking the skill premium to the emerging literature...

"Policymakers and economists disagree about the impact of bank regulations on the distribution of income. Exploiting cross-state and cross-time variation, we test whether liberalizing restrictions on intra-state branching in the United States intensified, ameliorated, or had no effect on income...

"This study examines the impact of Poland's trade liberalization 1994-2001 on the industry wage structure. The liberalization was undertaken in preparation for Poland's accession to the European Union and was more pronounced in industries with larger shares of unskilled labor. Our analysis...

Skills and Jobs in Brazil: An Agenda for Youth is a new report focusing on the challenge of economic engagement among the Brazilian youth. In the context of a fast aging population, Brazil's greatest economic opportunity is to increase its labor productivity, especially that of youth. This...

Uruguay faces medium- and long-term challenges associated with two global megatrends: population aging and technological change. These two megatrends have been developing for some time, but policy responses have been late or inadequate in many cases. Trying to delay them--by promoting higher...

In recent years, skills development has become a priority among developed and developing countries alike. The World Bank Group, in its quest to end extreme poverty and promote shared prosperity, has joined efforts with countries and multilateral development partners to ensure that individuals...

Promoting relevant technical and life skills is one option to empower adolescent girls by increasing their capacity to generate income and therefore by enhancing their bargaining power within the household. This Note presents a situation analysis of the current skills set and employment outcomes...

Skills development offers a range of benefits to out-of-school adolescent girls and alleviates a key obstacle to youth employment in developing countries. But do increased skills lead to delays in early marriage and pregnancy? Not always, according to the available empirical evidence. Although...

This policy note is a diagnostic of the state of Nigerian skills and human capital. It seeks to understand the kinds and levels of human capital that Nigeria possesses to support its efforts toward economic competitiveness over the next two decades. It also looks at inefficiencies of the...